A mysterious disease that is turning sea stars to goo has taken off along the Oregon coast, with up to half or more of the creatures being infected in just the last few weeks, scientists say.

Until now, Oregon was the one state along the U.S. West Coast essentially spared from the disease. In April, researchers estimated less than 1 percent or so of the purple ochre sea stars (Pisaster ochraceus) living within 10 sites along Oregon's intertidal zones — which provide an easily accessible place to monitor sea stars — were affected by the wasting disease. By mid-May that percentage had gone up slightly, and then after that it seemed to skyrocket.

"The percentages we saw last week, they were as high as 40 to 60 percent of the population that's showing signs of wasting," said Bruce Menge, a marine biologist at Oregon State University, who is studying the wasting disease in Oregon. [See Images of the Purple Ochre Sea Stars]

Turning sea stars to goo

Sea star wasting syndrome causes a sea star's body to disintegrate, ultimately leading to death.

The disease tends to progress from no outward signs to behavior changes in which thesea stars cross their arms and seem to collapse on themselves. Then white lesions appear on the surface of the sea star's body that turn into holes; those lesions are typically followed by the disintegration of skin around the lesion and the loss of a limb or several limbs, and in extreme cases the animal's entire body is affected by the syndrome. Some of the creatures physically tear their bodies apart in the process, scientists say.

"We've seen a number of cases where all that's left is a puddle of their skeletal parts and a bunch of bacteria eating away at the tissue," Menge told Live Science. "It's a pretty gruesome thing to see."

The current outbreak of sea star wasting syndrome was first reported in June 2013 along the coast of Washington by researchers from Olympic National Park. Since that report, die-offs have been documented everywhere from California to Alaska and even along the East Coast from Maine through New Jersey.

View gallery

Undergraduate students at Oregon State University assist in monitoring the intertidal zone on the Or …

"Wasting has been known for a long time, but usually it's very localized to a single site or single region," Menge said. When that's the case, as it was last August just north of Vancouver, British Columbia, the chances for recovery are high since the plankton, or floating forms, of the sea stars from healthy, nearby populations can recolonize those areas that were hit.

"The thing that is worrisome now is that it's happening pretty much all along the West Coast, even up into Alaska," Menge said.

In this widespread outbreak, Oregon seemed to be a lucky outlier. "We were hoping that for some weird reason we were going to miss out on it. We were optimistic," Menge said. "It finally did hit, and we really have no idea what the pathogen is, what the mode of transmission is. "

Mystery disease

The cause of the wasting disease is unknown, though scientists working on the mystery are testing whether an underlying virus or bacteria is to blame, along with some environmental stress, such as water temperature or salt content, making the organisms more vulnerable to it.

"We are finding correlations between certain microorganisms and viruses present in the lesions," Gary Wessel, of Brown University in Rhode Island, told Live Science in an email. "We are now testing whether these organisms are causative (by infecting healthy animals and seeing if they replicate the wasting phenotype) or just associated."

Wessel added that his lab is also looking into the impacts of environmental stressors.

"In our challenge experiments to test infectivity, we are stressing the animals with salt conditions and temperature to determine if this environmental stress makes them more susceptible," Wessel said.

Since sea stars can act as keystone predators, meaning their predatory activities shapean ecosystem, their loss could have far-reaching impacts, the researchers say. By eating mussels on the low shores in Oregon, sea stars keep those populations in check so the bivalves don't explode in numbers, at the expense of other organisms. Menge said it's too early to say whether the sea stars' mussel-munching could be compensated by whelks in the area.

In addition to leaving a void in a finely tuned ecosystem, the loss of sea stars would also disrupt a seeming iconic shoreline organism.

"The aesthetics of the rocky shore are going to be quite a bit less," Menge said. "They are charismatic beasts."

Follow Jeanna Bryner on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook &Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

Defying Russian warnings, Moldova and Georgia head for EU pact

People gather for a rally to protest against Russian military actions and its backing for the country's two separatist regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Tbilisi in this September 1, 2008 file photo. Undeterred by the conflict triggered by Ukraine's swing towards Europe, the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Georgia will sign a trade and political pact with the European Union this month with Russia warning both countries against the move, reported June 10, 2014. REUTERS/Irakli Gedenidze/Pool/Files

By Margarita Antidze and Alexander Tanas

CHISINAU/TBILISI (Reuters) - Undeterred by the conflict triggered by Ukraine's swing towards Europe, the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Georgia will sign a trade and political pact with the European Union this month with Russia warning both countries against the move.

The two small countries - Moldova has a population of just over 3.5 million and Georgia 4.5 million - see the signing of an association agreement as the crucial step towards mainstream Europe, leading to eventual membership of the powerful EU trading bloc.

But, as has been shown by their regional neighbor Ukraine, Russia sees their westward move further away from Moscow's sphere of influence as a geo-political setback that could threaten its markets too.

Last November, Russia persuaded a now-ousted Ukrainian leader to pull out of an identical pact with the EU. When protests then chased him from office, Russia, in a backlash, annexed Crimea, and armed pro-Russian separatist groups sprang up in Ukraine's east and the battle there is still raging.

How Russia - which went to war with Georgia in 2008 - will react now remains the big unknown but officials have warned of "possible consequences".

With Moldova and Georgia harboring pro-Russian breakaway enclaves themselves within their borders - all of which are hankering after union with Russia and look askance on EU association - both states have valid grounds for concern from a Russian response to the June 27 signature.

"I am afraid Russia may create some problems in Georgia before the signing. We need to be very careful this month. The Russians did it many times before," said Guram Chichinadze, a 57-year-old businessman, sipping coffee downtown in Tbilisi.

Moldova fears Moscow might impose visa requirements on Moldovan citizens working in Russia - something which would immediately strangle a valued source of income into its struggling economy.

Or Russia might extend a ban on imports of Moldovan wines - already in place since September last year - to include fruit and vegetable that could hurt another source of export income in the land-locked country.

In the case of Georgia - which, unlike Moldova, has no borders with the EU and is less dependent on Russia for energy - the biggest fears are political rather than economic.

Having been frustrated in its desire to join the U.S.-led bloc NATO and with the 2008 war with Russia behind it, Georgia would seem to be more vulnerable as a Russian target now.

Politicians in Tbilisi see a possible threat coming from Russia absorbing the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions - both now recognized by Moscow but by few other countries as independent states - in a Crimea-style move.

"There is an aggressive attitude from Russia not only towards us, but towards any ex-Soviet state which has European aspirations. But this does not mean that we will reject our free choice," said Irakly Sesiashvili, the head of the parliamentary defense and security committee.

View gallery

People wave European Union (EU) and Moldavian national flags, and shout slogans, during a pro-EU ral …

FIRM COMMITMENT

With both states however firmly committed to signing the agreement in Brussels, it would seem too late for anything more from Russia now other than warnings of damage to their economies. But the consequences of signature might follow swiftly.

Joining a free trade zone with the EU and with the prospect of cheaper imports of consumer goods from Europe will bring only long-term benefits rather than overnight miracles to help Moldova and Georgia's struggling economies.

That is recognized by their leaders who emphasize more its political significance and symbolism.

Moldova, for instance, sees, down the road, the prospect of EU funding helping it to modernize its vital agricultural sector.

"These agreements mark the beginning of a process, not the end of one. But the symbolism of a signed agreement in Brussels is enormous - and that is why both Georgia and Moldova are so eager to have it," said Thomas de Waal, an independent analyst from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank.

Moldovan Prime Minister Iurie Leanca told Reuters in an interview his country would keep pressing for deeper ties with the EU.

"The signing of the agreement is not the final full-stop in our European aspirations. The next step is even more important - receiving the status of a candidate member of the EU," he said.

"The day after signing we will actively and effectively start working to get this status."

European commission President Jose Manuel Barroso travels to both countries this week to square away arrangements before their leaders visit Brussels for the signing.

Of the two, the most important for Russia is Moldova because of the greater pro-Russian tendencies in its society and the proximity of Romania - a member of the NATO military bloc as well as the EU - on its western border.

Heavily dependent on gas supplies from Russia, it has been governed since 2009 by various pro-Western coalitions. Even the opposition communists have now publicly supported signatures of the pact.

Attending a Russia-Moldova joint economic meeting late last year, Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian deputy prime minister and Kremlin envoy to Transdniestria, warned Moldova against not being too quick to rush into the EU.

"Traveling at such a speed, a locomotive can lose its rear carriages," he said.

But opinion polls in Moldova show as many as 45 percent of the population would prefer membership of the Russia-led Customs Union rather than a European future.

In one southern region inhabited by about 140,000 ethnic Gagauz, a Turkic people, an overwhelming majority of voters in an illegal referendum voted for integration into the Russian-led Customs Union last February.

TRUMP CARD

But Russia's biggest trump card lies in Transdniestria, a ragged Russian-speaking strip of land running down Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine where opposition to the pro-Western policies of the Chisinau government runs strong.

With a population of about 500,000 it is home to at least 1,200 Russian soldiers who guard tonnes of Soviet-era weaponry and ammunition. Commentators in Chisinau see it is as a sleeping dog that could swiftly be aroused if Moscow wished to foment unrest among Russian-speakers in the region.

"Over the longer term I think we can expect Russia trying to build up a stronger constituency in domestic politics in Georgia and supporting anti-European parties," said de Waal.

"Moldova is under much greater pressure and Russia has more cards to play there. Transdniestria has applied to join the Russian Federation and can be exploited."

Whether Russia has now quietly accepted the inevitability of a signature by the two states later in June is not clear. Nor is it known what retaliatory steps - possibly in trade restrictions of some sort - Moscow might make.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is scheduled, however, to visit Chisinau on either June 17 or 18, giving him a last chance to spell out Moscow's view.

"It is Georgia's sovereign right to sign the Association Agreement with the EU, but it should also understand possible consequences," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a news conference last month.

"Georgia's sovereign rights should be exercised without damaging the rights of others ... It is very important to understand the consequences which the upcoming signing of the Association Agreement between Georgia and the EU on June 27 may have."

(Writing By Richard Balmforth; editing by Anna Willard)

Two people, including a lone gunman, were killed in a shooting at a high school in Oregon, police say.

The Multnomah County Sheriff's Office said one student died in the shooting at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, which is east of Portland, on Tuesday. The gunman also died, Troutdale Police Chief Scott Anderson told reporters, and the situation had been "stablilized."

Police said they were in the process of notifying the next of kin for both the student and the gunman. They did not release their names.

A teacher was also injured and treated at the scene for non-life-threatening injuries. According to the Oregonian newspaper, the teacher, Todd Rispler, was grazed by a bullet.

According to the authorities, the gunman, armed with a rifle, entered the school and opened fire shortly after 8 a.m. Multiple agencies responded and the school was immediately placed on lockdown as SWAT and tactical units searched the campus, about 16 miles east of Portland.

Police spokesman Sgt. Carey Kaer told the Associated Press that officers located the shooter, a male teen, slumped on a toilet in a bathroom. Police then "used a robot with a camera to investigate and discovered the suspect was dead and that he likely killed himself."

Local television footage showed dozens of officers arriving at the scene, some in armored vehicles, with guns drawn. Students were seen evacuating the school with their arms raised.

"This is a very tragic day, one I hoped would never be part of my experience," an emotional Reynolds School District Superintendent Linda Florence told reporters.

In an interview with KOIN-TV, the parent of one student said his son had heard six shots fired inside the school.

The Oregonian initially tweeted that police believed there were three shooters. The newspaper later retracted that report.

The Oregonian @Oregonian

Follow

Nervous parents were directed to a nearby parking lot to wait for buses to be reunited with their children. Deputies told hundreds of parents gathered there that the process would be "slow and emotonal," the paper said.

View photo

.

Parents of Reynolds High students wait behind police tape to be reunited with their children. (Reuters)

According to the Reynolds School District website, the school has 2,648 students, making it the second-largest high school in Oregon. Wednesday is the last scheduled day of class at Reynolds High. Graduation was scheduled for Thursday.